Mama Campaign.

MAMA CAMPAIGN

ACORD
in partnership with Peace and Rights Program PRP have been funded by
the UN women to run a one year project dabbed MAMA CAMPAIGN.

This
is a campaign aimed at changing attitude and behavior of the Bungoma
electorate towards women leadership and positively shape opinion about
women aspirants with the end result of retaining the current elected
women and electing more women than ever before in the history of
Bungoma’s elective politics.

This project aims to help retain the 6
elected women MCAs in Bungoma county and increase the total number of
elected women MCAs to 15 out of 45.

The following strategies will be employed:

Evidence Based Strategy – Drawing from the baseline lessons on how to approach the question of
promoting women leadership, we will aim to build social change to
appreciate women’s equal ability to be leaders just as men.

Cascading campaign to build an enabling environment-Women
have in the past been victims of violence and are more likely to be
turned off from voting or offering themselves for elective positions due
to violence and intimidation. This strategy will have a cascading
component that aims at building an all-round conducive atmosphere for
both women candidates and women voter. The police and other security and
law enforcement arms of government will play a crucial role. Candidates
too will be required to sign a code of conduct to keep peace.

Advocacy Approach – we will engage key opinion leaders and gatekeepers (council of
elders, the clergy and other role models in the community) to build
support for women leaders and beseech communities to hear women
aspirants plans for them instead of focusing on trivialities and
personal negative attacks

Community Engagement-is
a strategy we will employ using integrated media to spread positive
vibes about women aspirants. Often, women do not get the requisite time
both on and off air (our baseline puts women on air time at a paltry
10-20% per day). This strategy will of necessity promote discussion,
ownership and behavior change leading to accepting and voting for women
aspirants

Reinforcement strategy –Newly acquired
behaviors need to be reinforced so that people do not backslide. We
will employ cost effective ongoing reinforcement of positive images of
both serving elected women leaders and new aspirants using digital
engagement through social media and mobile phone platforms. Reforms
like kings and vagabonds and the almighty

The campaign will be executed in four phases, as follows.

1st Phase will be to use the existing baseline evidence to design the integrated communication campaign.

2nd Phase will be to develop campaign messages to be pre -tested in select sites in the county

Note
that the messages will include an umbrella message and other key
communication messages targeting the different segments which the
campaign will seek to relay. Indeed, the messages will also be
contextualized to target various audiences. We will adopt the cognitive
testing method with the various target audiences to ensure it is
relevant, culturally and socially appropriate and achieve the campaign
objectives

3rd Phase will be campaign roll-out.

4th Phase will be to wind up and hand over the campaign to the community through
the partners that will have worked with us on this initiative.

Expected output for the campaign.

A community campaign communication plan undertaken to help improve the electorates attitudes to women leadership.
A
community radio brand activation strategy and empowered radio listening
groups executed to profile women aspirants currently in office and new
ones including the nominated women leaders intending to vie for
electoral seats
Market place activation, talking and moving
walls used to reach out deep into the rural areas and market centres
with positive messages about the added value of women leadership
MAMA
Campaign networked and linked to other internal and like-minded
campaigns in the country, through social media for early warning and
response to violence and lesson learning and sharing.